Anyone who has ever had to lay up and treat a horse after an injury or surgery knows how complicated the situation can become.
Anyone who has ever had to lay up and treat a horse after an injury or surgery knows how complicated the situation can become.
Asking staff at the boarding barn to hand-walk, cold-water hose or re-bandage a horse twice a day for weeks is impractical. Doing those chores in a backyard barn is challenging for the owner who works a 40-hour week miles away, especially in the winter.
Familiar with this scenario, equine veterinarian Endia (Indy) Peckham has established a rehabilitation center for horses on Snyder Road in Bainbridge Township to relieve the pressure on owners and trainers in Northeast Ohio and solve the problem of fewer and fewer vets available to treat horses.
“When a horse is injured, recovering from lameness, injuries or surgery, they need a lot of treatment, stall rest and care,” she said in a recent interview. “The horse industry is changing with more female horse owners who make their own money and spend it on their horses. If a horse is injured and needs special care or rehab, the owners can’t take a lot of time off work to care for their horses and many barns don’t have the manpower to provide the necessary care.”
Peckham knows from personal experience — both as a vet and a parent — how difficult these choices can be.
Now 52, she worked at practices in Northeast Ohio, putting in 90-hour work weeks — a common schedule for vets treating horses and making farm calls that burns out many and leaves them choosing to work at a less demanding small-animal practice.
Like many female equine vets, when Peckham tried to balance her personal life — marriage and a new baby on the way — she hit a roadblock. Traditional equine practices don’t offer flexible schedules and work options that many other businesses have adapted for women and working mothers, she noted.
Although Peckham was a talented veterinarian who loved her career, when she became a mother of a baby boy, she knew what her priority had to be — especially when her job led to divorce, she said.
At first, she worked a reduced schedule as the primary equine veterinarian for The Visiting Vet, a mixed animal practice on the west side. Then, she started her own practice and shared coverage with another female veterinarian.
That led to establishing a new type of business that would provide a lifestyle she and others in the vet industry could manage.
“In this industry, 75% of the graduates from vet school are female, but there are no equine vets coming along at all. I knew we had to change the way we practice and that is how I built my business with a family-first approach,” Peckham said.
She continues her traditional ambulatory veterinary practice, while her new practice, Meridian Equine Rehabilitation and Wellness, focuses on rehabilitation and short-term care.
“I wanted to build a practice that would offer services unlike other vet clinics. I didn’t want to compete with them, just take a different approach to work with them,” said Peckham, who is certified in equine rehab and performance horse medicine, as well as being a veterinary acupuncturist, a highly-trained and -tested certification.
Her new practice addresses this need, with a strong focus on care compliance prescribed by a vet. “It is amazing how much faster horses recover when instructions are followed. Each recovering horse may need an hour or an hour-and-a-half of care a day,” she said. “If my horse were hurt with a tendon injury and needed daily care and hand walking, I would want to come here.”In 2022, Peckham purchased a 12-stall boarding facility with paddocks and an indoor arena for the center, as well as an apartment for an on-site manager. Horses may stay at the facility anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, Peckham said.
It wasn’t long before she realized she needed more space for her in-demand business.
She is in the process of adding a new building that will provide more stalls, as well as an office, apartments for interns, a water treadmill and Himalayan salt room for her patient’s rehabilitation.
Meridian Equine Rehabilitation and Wellness has 13 full- and part-time staff members, all women, and, like most growing enterprises, is looking for more.
“Every person who works for me has extensive experience in the industry and the amount of knowledge available to me is great. I would love to add more people as my business grows,” Peckham said.
In her rare spare time, she serves on the board of trustees for the nonprofit Chagrin Hunter Jumper Classic, where she will serve as the vet on-call should emergencies arise at this year’s horse show July 5-14 at Chagrin Valley Farms.
Peckham has ridden hunter and jumpers with trainer Cindy Foster since she was a teenager and hopes to compete at the Classic again this year, but taking care of horses in need will be her priority, she said.
Better Wiebel contributed to this article.
